SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate a new rev­enue stream that has dried up dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic by host­ing the 2020 edi­tion of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial open­ing of the $11.3 mil­lion Bagatelle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Diego Mar­tin, one day af­ter Sports and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe said T&T had ac­cept­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to host the en­tire six-team event from Au­gust 18-Sep­tem­ber 12, Row­ley in­sist­ed the CPL will be part of the coun­try’s “eco­nom­ic resur­gence.”

Asked how much rev­enue the CPL will gen­er­ate for the coun­try, Row­ley said, “There are num­bers that econ­o­mists pulled up. But it is a pos­i­tive num­ber in terms of prof­it. The CPL prin­ci­ples speak in terms of mak­ing loss­es...but keep­ing the tour­na­ment alive, and third­ly it will bring op­por­tu­ni­ties for those who are di­rect­ly in­volved. But more so it is a restart of an en­gine.”

Row­ley said all for­eign play­ers, man­agers and aux­il­iary staff will have to ad­here to strict COVID-19 guide­lines dur­ing the event and the quar­an­tine re­quire­ments will be worked out by Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and the Min­istry of Health.

“My un­der­stand­ing is that all the teams will be housed at the Hilton (ho­tel) and the Hilton would be used for noth­ing else dur­ing that pe­ri­od but to fa­cil­i­tate the teams and their as­so­ciates.”

Row­ley said CPL will pay for the quar­an­tine of the 250-off of­fi­cials and play­ers.

“So that is one of the ben­e­fits, so the Hilton will get some of the busi­ness. The Hilton is State-owned. We have been pay­ing the staff with no busi­ness,” he said, adding the play­ers and their as­so­ciates will be quar­an­tined in small groups.

Be­fore leav­ing their coun­try of ori­gin, Row­ley said the play­ers will be test­ed and must be COVID-19 free. Up­on ar­riv­ing on our shores, they will be retest­ed.

“If they are neg­a­tive still then they will be al­lowed to mix with the big­ger groups...then they can go and play,” he said.

The PM said what is in­ter­est­ing is that the CPL is the on­ly tour­na­ment in the world that will be viewed glob­al­ly.

“One of the things we ne­go­ti­at­ed and the ben­e­fit we ex­pect to get is be­cause the en­tire tour­na­ment is here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, for that en­tire pe­ri­od we will be fea­tured world­wide. It is prob­a­bly to our best ex­po­sures.”

By host­ing the CPL, Row­ley said the coun­try will be send­ing a sig­nal that our health con­di­tions are healthy and we are re­turn­ing to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy.

“It is an eco­nom­ic thing...it’s a pro­mo­tion­al thing...it is an emo­tion­al thing,” he said.

No fans will be al­lowed in­to the venues to view the match­es due to the COVId-19 re­stric­tions but they can see all the ac­tion live on CNC3, which has the ex­clu­sive rights to the event lo­cal­ly. Six teams—de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, Ja­maica Tallawahs, St Kitts & Nevis Pa­tri­ots, St Lu­cia Zouks and the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers—will be vy­ing for the ti­tle.

The PM said the West In­dies squar­ing off with Eng­land this week in the first test match was al­so a good de­vel­op­ment, adding based on how suc­cess­ful this goes it would fa­cil­i­tate fur­ther match­es be­ing played around the world.

Told that Gov­ern­ment had been crit­i­cised for open­ing the bor­ders to the CPL teams while T&T cit­i­zens are be­ing kept out, Row­ley in­sist­ed that “the CPL play­ers are not com­ing from places where they can’t get out...where the bor­ders are closed.”

He said T&T’s bor­ders con­tin­ue to re­main closed to keep the virus out, which is a pri­or­i­ty.

“Sec­ond­ly, we are bring­ing our peo­ple in from ar­eas where there is in­fec­tion rag­ing slow­ly and care­ful­ly. And third­ly, we want our econ­o­my to stay alive.”

The PM said 2020 was al­so the last year for ne­go­ti­at­ing the CPL tour­na­ment in T&T.

“This year was the last year of the ex­ist­ing arrange­ment. But when we did ne­go­ti­ate this, we did it for a three-year pe­ri­od. What we have agreed to do in this ne­go­ti­a­tion, to have this tour­na­ment, is that the CPL will con­sid­er con­clud­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with us for an­oth­er three years,” he said.